


the cure for anything

by sidneysid



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Alternate Universe - Percy Jackson Fusion, Gen, implied suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-11 23:02:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16861708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidneysid/pseuds/sidneysid
Summary: The ocean is his mother.The sand under Kanata’s feet sticks to his bare skin. His shorts stick to his thighs, damp still from his daily submersion in the lake.There are no birds in the sky. If he keeps facing forwards then there is nothing but the beach he sits on, the bay stretching out in front of him, and at the edge of his vision a curve of land with a city that’s so far away it looks like a child’s diorama.





	the cure for anything

**Author's Note:**

> If this seems familiar, it was originally posted as part of a drabble collection a year ago, though it has been edited since then.

The ocean is beautiful and inviting. If Kanata ever ventures in, deep enough that the water is neck-high, it will take him and he will drown. He is allowed to stay at the shoreline, allowed to soak his shins, but no deeper.

The ocean is his mother.

The sand under Kanata’s feet sticks to his bare skin. His shorts stick to his thighs, damp still from his daily submersion in the lake.

There are no birds in the sky. If he keeps facing forwards then there is nothing but the beach he sits on, the bay stretching out in front of him, and at the edge of his vision a curve of land with a city that’s so far away it looks like a child’s diorama.

Kanata has been coming to this camp for eleven years now. Eleven years of training himself to defend against the monsters that seek to kill him. Eleven years of communal meals, sacrificial food offerings sent up in smoke, enchanted mugs that never need refilling.

It’s been ten summers of new campers coming and confusing him for a lake-nymph when they catch a glimpse of him underwater. Kanata is not a nymph — he doesn’t have their skill with weaving — but he’s spent so much time among them that it feels stranger to walk on dry land than to sink into the lake-bed. He’d sleep there, if there wasn’t a rule about campers sleeping in their Cabins under threat of death-by-harpy.

He is the only known member of Amphitrite’s cabin, despite Camp Half-Bloom’s long history. As such, it had been Kanata who had designed the cabin after his mother had claimed him. Each cabin has a minimum of four beds.

Kanata pushed the spare three beds into one corner, and let them gather dust. He sleeps surrounded by fish tanks, his siblings from the sea glowing phosphorescent in the dark. Shells are embedded in the sand-coloured walls. In the night, when ripples of refracted light catch mother-of-pearl and glint like moonlight, it feels like he’s sleeping at the ocean floor.

Kanata wants to swim in the waves. He sinks into rivers and lakes instead. They don’t drown him, but they don’t make him feel clean either.

Kanata slowly stands, like water sloshing in a glass. His blue shirt is damp around the collar, but halfway dry already. Thoughts bubble through him, tingling his tongue like carbonated soda.

It would be so easy to wade out.

“Kanata,” says a voice from behind him, and without turning Kanata knows who that voice belongs to.

“Mama.” He was on a quest, last time Kanata heard. Madara Mikejima is often away on quests, though he first came to camp the same time that Kanata did. Now, he only seems to see Camp Half-Bloom as a convenient place to rest between excursions.

“I just got back,” he says, “I thought I’d find you here!” As if he can read minds. He probably can’t. Madara’s godly parent has many names — some simply ‘Mother’ — but none suggest that mind-reading is one of her gifts. Kanata’s thoughts are just gripped by a dark undercurrent, currently pulling him towards suspicion before anything else.

Sluggishly, Kanata turns his mind towards the present and turns his head towards Madara. The interloper on his beach looks the same as ever, smiling from ear to ear. Kanata is already sick of him. “When will you be ‘leaving’ next?”

Madara laughs, from his belly, and answers a question Kanata didn’t ask. “There was a festival in California I needed to attend, I brought back souvenirs!”

There are many Gods, major and minor, whose rites have gone unperformed for centuries, festivals gone uncelebrated, and Madara has taken it upon his broad shoulders to soothe them. The Gods speak to him, with messages sent by a hundred different methods, and Madara always accepts them with a smile.

Madara strides across the sand towards Kanata, and the ease with which he walks makes jealousy twinge in Kanata’s chest. The sun is low in the sky, and in this light Madara looks like something ancient and powerful. Maybe all of them look like this to true mortals, in the right light.

Madara doesn’t stay long in camp because, in truth, he does not quite belong here. He looks as unfamiliar in this place as Kanata feels, standing on the sand instead of in the surf. It had been Madara who saved his life, more than a decade ago, when they had both ran from monsters and found this safe haven. But Madara had not been able to stay. Quests called for him, he tied himself to responsibilities that dragged him across the continent, always searching and never content.

His mother is older than Greece, goddess to a place that no longer truly exists, and this camp is for the children of the Greek gods. Madara’s mother was worshipped in Greece, and so he has a cabin here, but his being here is like wearing clothes a size too small. It chafes.

When Madara hugs him, Kanata doesn't hug back. But he does not move away, lets Madara hug him for a few moments before reaching up his hand and gently chopping Madara’s head.

“Welcome ‘home’, Mama.” He says, because this is the closest thing to a normal home that either of them can have.

“Yeah. It’s good to be back.” Madara steps away but extends his hand, beckoning Kanata away from the ocean and back to land. “It’s almost dinner. Chiaki will be waiting for you.”

Kanata doesn’t take his hand, but he follows as Madara leads the way to the dinner pavilion. He watches people run up to Madara, watches as Madara ruffles their hair or picks them up and swings them in circles.

When he sees Chiaki sitting at his table with his dinner plate  — when he sees the children they have taken under their wing, scattered between the dining tables, look up when he comes in and smile in welcome — Kanata almost forgets the call of the ocean.

Almost.


End file.
